


The Poisoner

by Battydings



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, First Time Sex, Leroux, Madness, Murder, One Shot, arsenic - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:55:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29521197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Battydings/pseuds/Battydings
Summary: Resentment will make monsters of us all.*Leroux-Canon compliant
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera
Comments: 28
Kudos: 52





	The Poisoner

** The Poisoner **

Christine was not sure where the initial contemplation to commit murder began. She was not a violent individual by nature, nor was she prone to seek confrontation. She was not a woman unheard of speaking her mind, yet she lacked a love of conflict. Still, somehow the idea of killing him had burrowed its sinister form into the depths of her brain like a parasitic worm and, once it was there, she could not resist its wriggling, nagging itch.

Her resignation to a marriage not of her choosing began with the turning of the brass scorpion. In her mind, she had told herself it was to save so many innocent people who would burn and evaporate with the single explosive force of hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, but she knew she was merely tired of denying Erik any further. She lacked the strength to fight any longer and, so long as she knew Raoul was alive in the world, she may be satisfied.

She truly had no one to blame for this mess but herself. True, Erik had manipulated and deceived her, coming to her in the guise of something he wasn’t. Did she truly believe his farce? Was she truly that naïve? Deep down, she always had suspicions on the matter, yet never allowed to them fully coalesce in her consciousness until the fateful night he brought her into his domain…until she saw what lay beneath the black mask. She had toyed with the hearts of both men, knowing the dangers but committed to the game regardless. In truth, she had loved neither man fully, only pieces of them. Secretly, she wished she could select the parts she admired from each and assemble them together like a collage to form the perfect suitor.

She never knew of Raoul’s fate. Once she had turned the scorpion and the men had been rescued from the flooded confines of the torture chamber, she was not permitted to speak to either of the waterlogged men. The Persian had awoken and called to her, but she steadfastly ignored his attentions, lest it invoke Erik’s wrath. Instead, she sat by the warmth of the fire and put on a show of reading from a book.

Raoul never awoke, laying stonily upon one of the couches in the sitting room like a beautiful corpse at its wake. She dared not draw near to him, dared not even to glance in the direction of her friend, fretful that such an act would send Erik into another spiral of madness.

She had dozed in her chair by the fire, exhausted by the events of the horrible evening and when she awoke the two men were gone and Erik with them.

Erik claimed with great passion that he had released the young viscount and deposited him safely to the surface. Yet she would never know for certain whether he was truthful, and, in many ways, she did not wish to know the truth. Ignorance is indeed bliss.

Only days after she had made her coerced decision, Erik had alighted to the surface to tend to some matters prior to their wedding. When he returned, he was humming a delightful tune, seemingly quite content with himself. With him, he carried a copy of L’Epoque.

“That pesky Persian will not bother us any longer.”, he cheerfully proclaimed as he hung his fine coat and hat.

“You did not kill him…”, she gasped, the contents in her stomach twisting with guilt. She felt blame worthy for any death committed in her name.

“Do not be silly, my dear.”, he retorted breezily as he strolled to the hearth and began to start a fire. As the flames rose and flicked in the air, he took one more glance at a page in the newspaper, gave a quirky little smile and tossed it into the inferno.

She never knew what he saw on that paper.

The wedding was not really a wedding, but a rushed affair performed by a terrified priest in the deadest hour of night. True to Erik’s word, they were married in the Madeleine, yet without all the frills and joy that typically rode on the heels of a traditional wedding. There were no witnesses, no revelers of the occasion, no well-wishers to bid them a pleasant union. The man of the cloth whom they stood before and exchanged their vows was pale and sweat drenched with fear. Had Erik threatened him?

Erik did not even have a last name to give her but insisted it mattered not.

“It is a silly tradition, Christine. You belong to Erik, with or without a name.”

The night of their wedding, he came creeping into her bedroom like a wraith come to steal her soul. He lurked at the foot of her bed with an indescribably terrifying heat in his eyes which stared into her with a penetrative gaze. They glowed brighter than ever before, only dimmed by the occasional blink of his eyelids. She was quite certain he was going to devour her, that she would become consumed completely.

She did not love him and yet she could not deny him. Was she to live her life to its end without understanding the ways between a man and woman? With a confidence she was not sure she had, she patted the spot on the bed next to her as one would invite a dog to join them.

“You belong to Erik.”, he reminded her as he began to crawl onto the bed like a predatory cat.

He leaned his unmasked face over her to blow out the candle sitting upon her bedstand. With the extinguishing of the light, his hands began to wander her body in the dark. He was indeed as gentle as a lamb as he peeled her from her layers of bedclothes and traced the features of her body which had been untouched and unspoiled by any other man. It was noticeable, by the jerky movements of his usually elegant hands, the amount of restraint he attempted to administer to each action as he eagerly sought to deflower them both.

He took a sharp inhale of breath as he plucked at her nipples with the sharp tips of his fingers, as though the action physically affected him as greatly as it did her. As her mouth spread wide with a shocked gasp at the remarkable sensation, he swooped down and claimed it for his own, his cool tongue darting forcefully to meet hers. The kiss was searing, branding her indelibly with the mark of his passion. Oh! She did not want him to stop, God help her!

They became lost in this mindless kiss for eons and she forgot entirely her own identity. It was impossible to know whether the vibrating in the cavern of her mouth came from his moans or hers. It was only when he broke away, panting like a feral animal, that she came falling back to earth.

The sharp, rustling sound of his clothing falling upon the floor had caused her heart to leap into her chest. The reality of what was to happen had seized her heart and sent it on a frantic pace.

When the frigid skin of his naked body pressed against hers in the dark and she became aware of the part of him that made him distinctly male pressing into her thigh like a violent promise, she nearly fainted with terror.

His skeletal hands reached down and parted her shy thighs and roamed her timid sex in the dark while he purred. She bit her lower lip during his explorations, filled with guilt at her sudden enjoyment, stifling a cry when his fingers searched inward, entering a realm where none had been before.

He did this repeatedly, entering her and exiting her with his slim digits, occasionally dipping his head low to grace her sex with a kiss from his cool, thin lips. Every sensation was surreal and strange, yet peculiarly divine and she could no longer hold back a very telling moan.

The terrible, traitorous sound which rose from her throat had stopped his ministrations and he hummed low in his throat with unbridled delight.

“My wife enjoys her Erik.”, he murmured as he settled himself between her legs. The jutting bones of his hips pressed nearly painfully into the fatty flesh of her belly.

She did not know what to expect from their union, only the things she had heard whispered by girls behind closed doors. The mechanics of it were understood, but she had no way of knowing how it would feel. Would it be painful? The dancers who giggled and gossiped had never indicated anything other than pleasure...

Curiosity had overcome logic and her hand reached downward in the pitch black to seek what would be inevitably claim her. When her hand brushed against it, his hips jerked forward and a primal sound she did not think could possibly have come from a such a dignified man flew into the room. Emboldened by his native cry, she wrapped her fingers around him and gasped in horror.

She could not possible survive such a thing! Would she not break?

Her mind reeled, telling her to scramble immediately from the bed and lock herself into the bathroom. Were those scissors still there, she wondered?

The thought had only just emerged when she felt him clumsily push between her thighs and in a single, overpowering rush of pain they had merged as one. 

She cried out and clawed at his bare, waxy chest blindly. His unearthly large hands gripped hers in the dark as he pinned them above her head. His head fell forward, and his breath came out raw and ragged into the shell of her ear.

“Erik is trying to be gentle.”, he muttered, almost as if to himself “Christine does not understand how starved he is. How pretty, how soft his wife…Oh, you are heaven incarnate.”

He pushed further into her, groaning like a man who would expire from pleasure as she lay there stiff as a board, feeling uncomfortably open and bare.

“Erik longs to give you this pleasure…”, he moaned in the most beautiful way.

He flexed his narrow hips, withdrawing the impossibly hard part of him from her swollen, throbbing sex only to roll into her once again. With her hands held above her head, he invaded her over and over, taking her completely and she could do little but drift away with him and his frenzied need.

It was unbearable, she felt as though she may be sawed in two, but the pain had turned into something dark and exquisite. She had never felt so vulnerable, never felt so connected to another human being. When his lips descended and claimed hers once more, she was lost in the daze of it all.

Thrusting hard into her one final time, he made a great, heavenly cry of satisfaction, before crumpling atop her like a bird with a broken wing. His breaths came out of him in raw form.

They lay like that for a moment as his breathing slowed. He propped himself onto his elbows to hover above her. The only object in the room she could see were his curious eyes, mere inches above her face. His cold hands gingerly smoothed away the hairs which had fallen into her eye and he tenderly placed a firm kiss to her brow as one would a child.

“My heart.”, he cooed, before withdrawing from between her legs, leaving her open and empty, throbbing and bare. She sensed a sudden loss at his departure but could not bring herself to stop him as he gathered his clothing, murmuring words of disbelief and love before quickly exiting her room.

She slept alone that night, feeling different, yet the same. A bud of resentment began to form within her, resentment for the man who could illicit such conflicting feelings within her. Her heart was an enigma which illuded even her.

Thus, their strange marriage began.

From the start he was a peculiar husband. He fawned over her, doting excessively. Cooking every meal for her so he could sit silently and watch her eat with rapt, hungry eyes. Sometimes licking his own lips as though he desired a taste of what she consumed, and yet, he never served himself a plate. He prepared large feasts only for her. She had become quite convinced the man did not eat, but how could one survive?

It went on like this for weeks, with her strange husband sitting elegantly in the chair across from her. His long, spindly legs crossed as he leaned back to observe her partaking of the sumptuous meal.

Finally, one day, Christine placed her silverware delicately upon the plate, blotted her mouth gently with the corner of the lovely fabric napkin and asked, “Will you not join me for dinner, Erik?”

He cocked his head to consider her with curiosity. “Your husband must be cautious, Christine”, he said with seriousness.

“Whatever for?”, she asked in exasperation.

“Christine would not wish for a fat husband.”, he gestured to his impossibly slender frame, all bone and sinew. His mouth was drawn into a tight line, as though he were offended by her suggestion that he share this meal with her.

There was a tense silence as their eyes remained locked with one another.

She was not prepared for the strange laughter that came roaring out of him. His shoulders rose and fell with the activity of his mirth and he slapped his hand firmly upon the table. Christine merely stared at him like a man who had gone stark raving mad.

“My wife! It is a joke! Is it not humorous?”, he cried through fits of snorting laughter.

“Not in the slightest, Erik. You never eat.”, she replied with a mouth agape at his behavior, more unusual than normal

She had never seen him truly laugh before and she found it had a nearly frightening affect. It seemed so unnatural for his imposing, austere personage. To appease him, she feigned laughter with a forced smile plastered upon her face.

“My wife is smiling.”, he mused contentedly. “You are so lovely when you smile.”

He began to tell this humorless joke every time she sat at the table, the wording was not always the same but the meaning always was. It was a sort of self-deprecating humor that she would have found tragic had she not remembered her circumstances. Each time she would smile politely and duck her head to hide her uncomfortable expression.

Eventually, she dreaded attending her meals, always waiting for the joke to come. The bud of resentment within her began to bloom.

They still had their music together, which brought her the most joy. She believed she could be content so long as she had this one common thread which bound them together. He was different when he played, when he sang, stripped of the things which made him so morbid to behold. Music metamorphosized him into a supreme being of beauty, it was only in these moments, saturated in sound, that she felt as though it were possible to love him.

It was impossible to know whether the vibrating in the cavern of her mouth came from his moans or hers.

In their intimate moments she would lay there and try in vain not to enjoy what he did to her. The intimacy had been raw and awkward in the beginning. His usually smooth gracefulness was replaced with fumbling hands, involuntary panting and a moan when he reached his fruition that caused her to throb between her legs with some strange, wanton need. With time he became more skilled, more confident and it became harder and harder to pretend she did not crave it. Eventually she found herself initiating it, with shy touches and suggestive words.

He had tried leaving a candle burning during their intimate moments together. Her eyes always remained averted away from him while he rutted atop her, that ghastly hole in the center of his face was so imposing it threatened to swallow her hole. So long as she did not need to look into the face of the man pleasing her, she felt she was free to express her satisfaction with the act. As the whimpers and mews would work their way from between her lips, he would become more encouraged.

“My wife, look at me, look at Erik!,”, he would cry between his energetic thrusts. Yet despite his desperate, heartfelt pleas, she could not bear to turn her eyes towards his visage.

He learned quickly that she was far more participant when there was no light. When the pitch covered the room and obscured all recognizable features. In that comfortable world without shape or color, she was content to exist as nothing but pure bodily sensation. She knew he could still see her in the dark, his glowing yellow eyes would rake her naked form with a gaze so lustful that it nearly scalded. His heady, murmured words of passion, which in the beginning had been words of love, evolved into confessions of desire. In the black of the room, he would confess to her all the sinful things he had dreamed of doing to her and, heaven help her, she found the words thrilling. Would the church allow such acts? Did it matter? The world of right and wrong seemed to exist in another place and time, not here, not in this bizarre domain which belonged solely to him.

He had made a habit of leaving after the act, until one night he chose to remain. Tucking her neatly like origami into his spidery limbs, she fell soundly asleep, too exhausted to wonder over the new behavior.

Upon awaking, with a candle lit in the room, she saw that he was gazing upon her.

“How did my wife sleep?”, he asked softly.

“Well, thank you.”, she replied, her eyes fixated on the pale expanse of his hairless chest.

“Will my wife ask how her Erik slept?”, he gruffly replied, as though she had made a misstep in her etiquette.

“I apologize,” she replied softly, “How did you sleep, Erik?”

“Like the dead, my dear.”, he responded, running a slender finger along the line of her jaw.

He began to snort and guffaw, much in the same way he did at dinner. The laughter was almost manic.

“My wife! Do you not understand? Erik sleeps like the dead because he is a corpse! A corpse who loves you!”, he had fallen to his back clutching his belly with the power of his laughter.

“Erik, why do you say such dreadful things?”, she replied.

“It is merely a joke, my wife.”, he coolly replied. “Erik only wishes to see his love smile.”

In reply she offered a forced smile and he appeared content. Perhaps that was a mistake, for he slept in her room each night after that. Every morning she rose to the same terrible, humorless joke.

She dreaded waking, and the growing bloom of resentment unfurled its petals wide.

Her life went on like this, with his desperate repetitive attempts at joviality and he vied for her smiles.

It was more than she could bear.

Perhaps that was when the idea of murder had implanted itself into her mind. It followed her daily, whispering the promise possibility into her ear.

_Freedom!_ , it cried.

She found herself fantasizing about it constantly. Scheming of all the ways she could end his life and loosen her bounds from him forever. While she bathed, she dreamt of coaxing him into the bath and submerging his head until his lungs filled with the hot, soapy water. When she carved into an apple, she wondered what it would feel like to plunge the knife into his chest, directly into his heart. The thought of blood repulsed her, and that thought was quickly shoved away into the darkest recesses of her mind.

In all of her thoughts, she never saw his face, only the idea of him. It was merely a shadowy silhouette of his form by which she committed these terrible acts. In truth, he was not cruel to her, nor was he abusive. Erik had been nothing but a doting, thoughtful husband, yet she was blinded by her resentment which burned so brightly within her chest.

As she sat by the fire, one night, a book in her hand and Erik relaxing with his usual nightcap of Cognac, she continued to think of all the myriad of ways she could murder and get away with it. None seemed possible, surely not for someone such as her.

He raised his glass her his thin lips and took a smooth draw from the rich, amber liquor. Watching this simple act, the idea sprung into her head, as though it had been waiting patiently this whole time for her to notice it.

_Poison._

Oh, it would be so terribly easy! He would never know and all it required of her was to slip the fatal substance into this decanter.

With her method of demise cemented firmly into her mind, the obsession of murder to stalked her daily. While she sat across from him at the dining table, during their night walks in the Bois, while he passionately kissed and fondled her, even during the most blessed part of her day, the creation of their music, she thought on his demise. Every moment, every event, every activity they had together was steeped in her wicked, dark thoughts of death.

She felt like the goddess Kali and never had she felt more powerful.

And now, when he told those humorless jokes, she laughed and laughed. For she knew what was coming.

She had purchased the little bottle of Arsenic from the apothecary during one of her rare solo outings. The small vial felt like salvation in her hand. It whispered promises of relief and she was so overcome with its seductive power that she stanchly ignored all her beliefs on the wrongness of murder.

The bottle sat hidden between the thick folds of a rarely worn dress hanging in her wardrobe. It taunted her each time she dressed and brushed her fingers along the fabric where it remained hidden. She became convinced that the only siren which existed in those cellars was that small container of destruction, for it called to her in the night. _I will set you free…_ , it sang.

He had noticed her distracted mind, frequently over the course of their month married. As they played music one evening, her mind lingered back in her bedroom with the little vial. His graceful playing halted and he turned on his seat at the piano.

“My wife is lost somewhere.”, he said sadly one evening. His unblinking yellow eyes concerned.

Shaking her head, she dismissively murmured, “No, only tired.”

The opportunity finally came a week later. He left the home underground to tend to some matters at the Opera. Kissing her brow before he walked out the door, he bid her a pleasant hour.

She waited for ten minutes after he left, before opening the front door to scan outside in the dark of the cellar. Content that he was gone, she rushed to her bedroom to fetch the vial.

Her heart was slamming in her chest as she held it up to her face with a mad smile fixed upon her lips. He had driven her mad, HE had done this, not her. He had only brought this upon himself.

She entered the sitting room like a woman entranced. Her eyes felt wild and bright as they spied the decanter where it sat proudly upon the mantle above the hearth. The decanter was low, and she knew the concentration would be ideal. One glass would invariably do its dirty job. Her fingers shook terribly as she deposited the colorless liquid into the decanter and gave it a quick, vigorous shake.

When the deed was done, she stood back and considered the poisoned liquid, like an artist who was appraising their own work. Her body felt electrified and alive for the first time in over a month.

This was real, she was really going through with this.

When he returned, she made a fierce show of nonchalance, as though the day was as any other. She offered him gentle touches and shy smiles, sang with him and listened as he spun melodies unrivaled. He seemed genuinely happy to have such a caring and thoughtful wife.

She ought to feel guilty, but she did not.

That night, as he poured himself a glass of cognac, the decanter spent from the one drink, she feigned a yawn. Bidding him goodnight, she shuffled off to bed like a coward. For all her fantasies revolving around this one moment, she still could not bear the thought of watching him die.

It was nearly impossible for her eyes to close as she lay in her dark bedroom. The implications of what she had done were far too great for her conscience to rest easy.

But eventually, she drifted off to sleep.

She found herself standing beside his chair in the sitting room. The fire in the hearth had long since expired, leaving nothing but a cold room in its absence. Her husband sat, the glass empty in his hand and his eyes open and vacant. There was no light shining from their depths. Her hand reached out to feel his skin and she jerked it back suddenly. His skin was like ice!

“Erik…”, she called to him. “Erik, wake up.”

He did not respond. His dull, empty eyes looking into nothing and his mouth slack and partially open. He was dead.

“Sleeping like the dead.”, she muttered, half crazed.

She was free! She was free and yet she was not!

The world came crashing down. The breath in her lungs became hitched and grew stagnate and she felt the walls closing in around her. She was lost now in a labyrinth, a labyrinth of her own choices and her own dark desires and she was terrified it would swallow her alive!

His lifeless eyes matched her soul, and she knew of the grave mistake that she had made.

She did not wish him dead!

“Oh God!”, she cried, the tears erupted from her eyes like geysers, “Please, Please, I don’t want this!”

She shook at his jacket lapels furiously, as though she could jolt him back to life.

Then she woke.

She flew from her warm bed like a startled sparrow fleeing its nest. Her bare feet carried her down the long hallway towards the sitting room where the fire was still blazing.

Erik sat in his chair, the cognac held in his hand as he stared pensively into the fire.

“Erik!”, she cried as she dropped to her knees before him. Her hand violently slapped the thick tumbler glass from his hands, sending it spilling upon the thick Persian rug. “How much did you drink?”, she sobbed, her voice thick.

He did not respond, merely looking down at her as those he did not recognize her.

“How much did you drink?!”, she demanded, grabbing his lapels and shaking him.

“I have had none, but I had intended to drink.”, He sadly spoke, his hand reaching out to tenderly graze her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Erik knows his wife poisoned the Cognac.”

Her eyes grew large and frightened.

“You knew? You knew, and yet, you intended to drink?”, her lily-white hand flew to her mouth at the horror. “Why Erik?”

He gave her such a sorrowful expression, it broke her.

“Erik did not know his wife was so unhappy. Christine must be terribly miserable, to taint her soul with such an act as murder.”, he gave a ragged sigh. “You must hate your Erik.”

“No!”, she cried, “I do not. Oh, Erik! Why? Why, if you knew there was poison in your glass would you still drink from it?”

A tear leaked from his eye and rolled along the horrible planes of his dead face. “Because, I love you so.”

Her lips met his with a painful intensity that bordered on mad. Relief flooded her as he opened his mouth to greet her and she could not taste the familiar burn of alcohol lingering on his tongue. He had not imbibed of the drink, and yet, he had come so close.

The bloom of resentment which she had nurtured and carefully tended, wilted away until it was only a dull memory.

The moment of clarity came upon her, sharpened and defined. Every act, every terrible joke, every gesture and thought he had ever given her was done so with love. He was a complicated man, terrible and wonderful and frightening, but he was hers.

She looked into his perplexed, glowing gaze and finally said the words she thought would never come.

“I love you, Erik.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me if you love it or hate it! :)


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